Blaming the Neo-Pagans

Many Christians incorrectly blame paganism for the Holocaust. Surprisingly, many pagans do, too. Why? Naturally the people who perpetrated the Holocaust, don't want to take responsibility for it, but why do pagans seem willing to accept that their religion is to blame [1] when it's simply not true.

During the height of Nazi power, less than two percent of Germany’s citizens claimed to be pagan. [2] If the Nazi regime had been pagan, no one would have dared to admit being Christian, just as no one dared to admit being atheist. Hitler never openly renounced his membership in the Catholic Church.

The two largest churches in Germany, Lutheran and Catholic, encouraged their members to protest against and stop the Nazi euthanasia program directed against “mental defectives.” That protest succeeded. However, neither church did anything to stop the deportation or murder of Jews.

Hitler Youth Insignia

"Fifty thousand Germans were involved in the Holocaust, and another fifty thousand were close enough to it to have known what was happening, and these people were overwhelmingly Christian. You can’t tell a secret to 100,000 people, and thus their willingness to kill Jews was based on the public Nazi ideology, the religious, creationist and Christian ideology presented in Mein Kampf.” [3]

The responsibility for the Holocaust lies with two thousand years of Christian theology that fuelled the Nazi regime. Why do pagans accept Christianity's attempt to shift the blame from Christianity to Paganism?

After the war, leaders in both the Catholic and Protestant Churches defended war criminals. The very few murderers who were executed had a minister or priest at their sides, helping them face their deaths with “dignity.” Germans viewed those executed as heroes and holy sacrifices. [4]

Nazi salute by Catholic priests

Most Christians ignore their religion’s role in the deaths of millions, including the six million Jews specifically targeted by the Christian Reich. (The number is actually much higher.) [5]

Not only do Christians ignore their theology's role in the Holocaust, but since World War II, many of them have appropriated the Jewish experience of the Holocaust. Catholics pretend that Edith Stein was imprisoned and killed for the Christianity she had adopted. The truth is that was sent to Auschwitz because she had been born Jewish. [6]

In our day, Protestant churches stage performances of The Sound of Music annually. It brainwashes children into believing that Christians were the victims rather than the perpetrators of the Shoah. It also promotes the myth that the evil of Jew-hatred has been defeated.

People never forgive those whom they have injured. So until Christians (and former Christians) acknowledge who perpetrated the Holocaust and work to understand why those people did it, they will continue the tradition of hating Jews, spreading lies about Jews, and ultimately, killing Jews.

The newest lies about Jews are different, but the hatred has its source in Christianity.  Today, most people do not believe that Jews desecrate the host. They do believe false accusations of Israelis committing genocide. (Check the population figures to dispel this absurd accusation.) Today, few people believe The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They do repeat ridiculous claims Jews are colonial invaders of their own ancestral lands. (Look up 'colonialism' to dispel that one.)

Until people take the time to learn facts and overcome their often gleeful antisemitism, they are as Christian as those who perpetrated centuries of pogroms and the Holocaust.

Today, many people make an effort to understand and oppose other kinds of bigotry, but the hatred of Jews is still acceptable. It's so intrinsic to our culture that few people are able to recognize it, even when it's pointed out to them. But you owe it to yourself to learn. Why? Because there will be an attempted genocide against Jews in North America during my lifetime. [*] Do you wish to be complicit through ignorance?

*As of January 2020, there are worrying indications that my prediction might not be wrong.